Alter: Right wing attacks on Obama are ‘racist tropes’

>>> the obama presidency we've seen blatant attempts by the far right to discredit and delegitimize the president. group of wealthy conservative activists planned to release a targeted dvd to targeted people. "the times" writes a 30-person focus group looked at three choices disnedsouza's 2016 obama 's america , which theorizes that president's political beliefs were shaped by the radical anti-colonial views of his kenyan father and dreams of my real father which posits the implausible theory that the president's real father is mr. davis and that mr. davis indoctrinated him early on. they receives copies of "dreams of my father" in the mail, jonathan alter and " chicago tribune " columnist clarence paige, the blatantness went through the roof, sarah palin who people have mixed views put out a facebook " obama 's shuck and jive ends with benghazi lies" referring to the attack on the libyan embassy. dog whisle is a dog whistle . shock and jive has an ethnic connection, not bad in all cases, it's slang, doesn't mean evil but to throw it at the president as an ethnic shot is blatant.

>> for knowledge with people with plantation days, slaves the shucking of the corn would jive each other to pass the time.

>> that's where it comes from.

>> shuck and jive, yeah, thanks to you i researched this, chris, i learned things. maybe sarah palin picked it up in her days as a sports reporter. the jumping to conclusions about benghazi there's a coverup stating it as yes it's going on and we have to stop it and barack obama is guilty, blah, blah, blah, that's paranoid style of politics where you don't take into account the fact that people can make mistakes or that signals can get crossed or whatever.

>> there were mistakes, i thought it was the 13th, it's the 14th of the month.

>> right.

>> when you keep doing this stuff, like at this thompson, i got nothing against tommy thompson , the kid shouts out at some event, this guy from obama is not extra chicago, no, he's from kenya, at this point in the discussion. that may be an acute negativity when trump brought it up but jonathan this trickles out every couple weeks. trump says the president is "monkeying with the unemployment numbers" keeps going on over and over again, just enough to keep it in the atmosphere. to the point where today only two in five republicans in the state of ohio, only two in five agree that the president was born in this country. it does work. it bleeds into people, they hear it enough from enough people and they go it must be something there and they do it and it works. it's terrible stuff.

>> chris, i actually think my old friend clarence is being a little bit polite. i think is rank racism. sometimes people on the right get very upset when people on the left charge racism, but shuck and jive, that's like talking about watermelon, for jews, talking about jews are greedy or the irish or drunk, whatever, these are racist tropes and we need to call them what they are, and i actually think at least implicitly trump was playing on racism today with his ridiculous stunt demanding obama 's college transcripts. what's the subtext of it?

>> what is that about? it's about affirmative action .

>> he's basically saying barack obama was too stupid to be at columbia because he was an affirmative action student and therefore because he was affirmative action , he must not have had good enough grades to stay in college or whatever he's talking about. it's racist. let's get serious about this.

>> not anybody out there thinks, people that don't hear it should hear it. over the summer romney's surrogate and former white house chief of staff john sununu criticized president america as un-american.

>> the president clearly demonstrated that he has absolutely no idea how the american economy functions. the men and women all over america who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. it is the american way . i wish this president would learn how to be an american."

>> he said this stuff he's not just black, which is obvious, he's obviously somewhere from somewhere else , un-american, trump keeps selling his stuff and they bite on it, he's rich, he might be smart, there's a mistake in thinking. what do you think, is this going to cull the reaction results in an election 50/50 and a couple people buy this slop because they hear it relentlessly from people that make a lot of money?

>> a lot of us thought four years ago that once obama got elected and handily so that all of the garbage would fade away. it hasn't. there are ridiculously high numbers particularly republican think he wasn't born in america .

>> they don't want him to.

>> i agree it's more than that, it's a cultural touchstone now, like you don't think obama 's really american? well neither do i, blah, blah, blah, and you got this sudden tribal attachment now.

>> it's sensitive. as a white person i think it's a statement against the white people like this. it has nothing to do with blacks, it's a sickness by the white people . they ought to be ashamed of themselves. clarence page , thanks for coming on, miss you buddy.